How do you think technology matures? It took years for automobiles to become reliable like they are today. It'll take years for EVs to become mature, but the only way to do that is to work on them now and improve as we go along. The absolute wrong thing to do is throw out the entire concept because they aren't perfect now.
Agreed. The innumerable problems that coincide with fossil fuel based technology means it's a terrible idea to continue to subsidize it at taxpayer expense.
So I take it you're against the government subsidizing science research in general? "The government shouldn't fund new technology" is a stupid and destructive position. We'd be living in the 1800s if it were up to solely the capitalistic market. I mean, the first broadly effective antibiotics that are responsible for saving probably hundreds of millions of lives at least only exist because of people working in government-funded labs, under government-funded universities, for the government. Why should the environment be treated like it doesn't matter to our civilization?
While I hate stuff like these rollbacks, we are already starting to see EVs save people money on gas and service, and they are stupidly fast compared to ICE counterparts. That's something Americans of all stripes can get behind.
Once I tried an ebike, I realized I never wanted to go back to gas engines. So fast, so much torque, and pennies to charge vs $70 gas tanks at Costco (even more at a normal gas station). It just makes economic sense to run PEVs in all major urban areas in addition to mass transit.
With traffic and some protected bike lanes, even a conventional bike can almost beat a car in a 7-14 mile drive in my city. An ebike makes it even easier.
I mean, how much does your e-bike cost? If you can get one, especially a used one for a relatively affordable price and you actually sit down and tally up car costs like insurance, gas, maintenance, AAA, tires, any number of other costs…. I don’t think it matters if someone occasionally steals your e-bike (outside of it being extremely frustrating and inconvenient). Someone could steal your e-bike every 6 months or so and you likely will still be spending FARRRRRR less buying a new/used electric bicycle than you would just owning a car and using it and then having to deal with the insane never ending bullshit costs of keeping a car on the road.
So idk, build up a savings so you can replace your e-bike if you need to and then just use it. So long as you get a years use out of it or so it has already earned you quite a bit of money from cutting car costs.
Get one of those e-bikes with a removable battery with a key lock, then take your battery so if someone steals your bicycle they can’t steal the actually expensive part.
Why? Using a car you can lock up seems like a better alternative intuitively, I am pointing out that other than the emotional distress of having an object of yours stolen, owning a car is a regular rolling disaster of costs and suffering that dwarfs somebody running off with your $800 used e-bike every couple of months.
How is this a bad take? It is literally a documented phenomena that people don’t rationally take into account how expensive owning and using a car is.
I use an Oxford Monster chain and U lock. I park my bike in highly visible areas. Registered it with 529 garage and have the tracking sticker on it. And if I'm really sketched out, I activate a bike alarm that is ungodly loud.
Mostly, it's about making your bike harder to steal. Cutting through 12mm chain and a standard ulock sucks. Getting caught with it being easily identified on 529 makes it risky to steal and easy to be returned. Some cities also do bike valet or bike lockers.
So basically, one side is a hive mind that's required to always do what its most powerful members want, and the other has free thinkers that sometimes disagree, and you're saying that the latter is weak, pointless, and should never exist.
Buddy, this is a terrible definition of "weak". What you're describing is a goddamn borg cube.
we are already starting to see EVs save people money on gas and service, and they are stupidly fast
there was an article on measurable air pollution improvements in I think San Francisco, attributed to EV use
the stupidity on industrial policy gets me: EVs are a new industry growing fast, and Chinese companies are growing fastest. Effing idiots want to throw away the chances for American companies to get into the new market. Sure, be more profitable for the next quarter while watching your legacy market dry up and don’t even try to make your mark. Somehow this is all twisted up in Sinophobia and racism and we’re in Bizarro World where everything is opposite
"Artificially low-priced Chinese EVs flooding the U.S. would cost thousands of American jobs and endanger the survival of the U.S. automotive industry as a whole."
I agree, but the real problem with ebikes over light motorcycles is the range. Trying to get an ebike with decent speed and range costs a fortune and the range and speed is still incredibly limited for long trips.
You also can't ride them on the road where I live, a point that I've been trying to get through to one of my roommates.
But don’t you see, unless there is one magical silver bullet solution that fixes everything then it’s all worthless and we should go back to dumping CFC’s into the atmosphere.
We should defintely still make EVs, overall they are going to be better than ICE. We just shouldn't force/subsidize everyone to have to buy and drive an EV like we did with ICE cars.
Are we? Diesel-ev hybrid is fairly effective and proven. Making a pure ev would just mean taking the diesel out, adding more batteries and installing electrical rail or over head trolley cables to charge them. Trains run on a schedule, so logistic planning should be straight forward.
Recently, yes. California's spent 16 years not building rail. The Gulf Coast states have been tearing their rail out and replacing it with highways for over a decade. The Upper Midwest has just kinda given up on doing anything useful, and just watched its transit infrastructure collapse.
The problem is that highway advocates don't solve the problem of "who's going to pay for all this?". The reason infrastructure in America is in disrepair is that funding for highways is supposed to be gotten from tolls and road taxes. But since everywhere in America is a freeway... there's no funding for repairs.
Expecting the Government budget to cover maintenance of infrastructure is wishful thinking... unless you're also willing to agree that the military is allocated too much money.
funding for highways is supposed to be gotten from tolls and road taxes.
Regressive taxation leads to overfunded main roads and underfunded side streets.
Expecting the Government budget to cover maintenance of infrastructure is wishful thinking
Roads are fundamental to the operation of any government. It isn't simply that states need to maintain roads. It is that states need roads in order to exist.
Roads are fundamental to the operation of any government. It isn’t simply that states need to maintain roads. It is that states need roads in order to exist.
Is it right to say then, that the users of the roads pay for maintenance? Do you expect the government to print more money to pay for maintenance?
Edit:
Regressive taxation leads to overfunded main roads and underfunded side streets.
As opposed to both main roads and side streets being underfunded without tolls and road taxes? Do you expect Government to print money to pay for all this?
Ok then that means we have to consider the fact that Car-oriented zoning laws and construction are bad for our future. 15-minute cities and infrastructure to support alternative modes of transit for longer distances are the way forward.
There's an enormous amount of money in renewable energy and battery manufacturing. That's why Texas leads the nation in wind farm power and Atlanta, Georgia is getting a $4.3B investment at its Hyundai electric vehicle plant.
But there's also a ton of legacy infrastructure that generates enormous revenue streams. If you've just invested billions into our rapidly expanding oil pipeline network
Alright buddy so you want to burn it down and cause utter chaos just cause you don’t like how things are going?
Well, when you put it that way it actually sounds a lot like the US military/government! You too should be friends!
…or are you only interested in blowing up pipelines in rich countries where the correct oil companies and defense contractors already own everything and are making money hand over fist?
If so would you hurt the soul of America like that? It would be like burning down Fenway or smashing the liberty bell to bits. Those poor executives would have to go home to their families and explain through tears and sobs that the halcyon days of shitting on the future of humanity for the next 15,000 years are over, and that consequences for the ruling class have officially arrived.
Why do I have to personally experience them? I'd say the biggest con is this:
The employee training the company offers is “woefully inadequate,” Reveal reported in its investigation. Turley told me she was never taught how to do her job and only shown videos that included a history of the plant and information about Tesla, but nothing about the work she would be doing. “You pretty much have to learn from the people that’s in there,” she said. Cleon Waters also said in his filing that he was never given any training for his job assembling parts of car motors. California safety regulators cited Tesla eight times for deficient training between 2013 and 2018.
Not going to buy an EV. No charging stations nearby. Can't install a charging station where I live. I probably have 10 years of driving left so I will stick with an ICE.
Seems like a good plan that’s right for your situation, but for all of our future, I hope that’s rare ten years from now.
For anyone in their own house, where it’s pretty straightforward to install a charger …. It’s damn nice to never again have to go to a local refueling station. Recharging your car can be just like your phone: plug it in overnight and it’s just always full.
Yeah, it can be a bit less convenient on a road trip, but 95+% time, plugging into your home charger is more convenient
There's also a huge about of FUD on EVs being able to be remotely controlled or disabled. The same can be done with gas vehicles that have computers in them and EVs can be made dumb with only the electronics needed for them to function.
But both Dems and Reps are heavily invested in oil... including other raw materials for example materials for EVs.
Also, I could be mistaken (I'm honestly not heavily invested in the whole "green" initiative beyond recycling - apparently that's a scam too), but isn't the entire process from A-Z in building an EV far more negatively impactful to the environment and humanity (child slavery apparently)?
So basically: both sides are as bad as each other and anyway probably it's all bad anyway?
Even if true that both sides are heavily invested in oil, both sides are not objectively equal on decisions to expand vs limit oil exploration rights, and both sides are not the same in pushing for more electric and less gas, and in improving vs reversing fuel efficiency standards, etc etc
That's all great, but the real thing that will stop it is economics. We have a PHEV and I calculated it out and we pay $8 per gallon equivalent compared to $5.50 for regular gas. That's a pretty big difference. Right now we ignore the EV part of the vehicle. (Live in California and I pay $0.50/kwh.)
We're planning on getting solar shortly and that may make it feasible, but until then, it's not.
Is electric pricey where you are? It's been a while since I calculated, but last I checked, electric was cheaper in my area than gas for most of the electric vehicles.
Good God, your utility company isn’t even using lube when they fuck you with a rusty shovel. Without solar, my time off use plan would make it $0.08/kWh. With solar I don’t even bother figuring out what my cost per mile is because it’s irrelevant till I need a fast charger. I don’t even pay $0.50/kWh at a fast charger usually. I’d be going with a full off-grid solar battery system if I were you. Charging my neighbors cars for free before selling a joule back to those assholes
What kind of electric mileage do you get? My Bolt gets about 3.5 miles per kilowatt hour, and my electricity costs $0.12 per kWh. I figure a car like that would get about 30MPG if it were an ICE vehicle. To go 30 miles would take about 8.5 kWh, which would cost about a dollar. Yes, your electricity is 4x the price (ouch!) but 8x the gas equivalent?
We have a Volvo XC90. Much bigger (and probably heavier) than your Bolt. It gets ~26MPG on the gas only mode. It has an 18.8kWh battery and can go ~30 miles on a charge. So again, bigger, heavier, and less efficient. At $0.50 per kWh, it takes ~$9 for 30 miles, and ~$5.5 in gas to go 26 miles.
Where in California are you? Here in SoCal with SCE their PRIME Time Of Use plan is $0.26/kWH from 9PM - 4PM. Totally works for my family since we work from home and drive EVs locally. We also have a 2019 Prius which gets us about 50-55 MPG and 500+ miles on a full tank for longer drives.
Edit: I should add that the standard Time Of Use plan is $0.38/kWH from 9PM - 4PM. Peak hour usage from 4PM - 9PM is somewhere between $0.53 - $0.62/kWh I think.
We mainly charge our car overnight and it works out well for us.
The off-hours rate for my electricity is $0.04 cheaper than the prime hours rate. It's laughable. $0.51 vs $0.47. Why bother even thinking about it at that pathetic difference? It's certainly not going to change the math much.
I'd argue the oil and gas industry, not auto. Lots of auto industry players like GM, Ford, Honda, Toyota are selling EV's. There's a market for them, people want them, there's money on the table. Why would auto not want that.
EVs are being built to save the car industry not the planet. I'll probably get an electric vehicle once the kinks get worked out but I know how the materials are acquired and what happens when the batteries can't hold a charge. It's a baby step but definitely shouldn't be stopped from evolving.
The weird part is, when you actually talk to a Conservative irl, they don't care about EVs. Sure they might not like them—they might even think they're a Political scheme or whatever. But they at least understand that there are more important things happening. Politicians failure to represent their user base's viewpoint in the US is always astounding.
Newer gasoline/petrol cars are also data collection machines. False dichotomy there.
Even if the electricity comes from fossil fuels, the efficiency of large plants is far better than that of individual combustion engines; and it provides better opportunity to replace the source with something renewable or at least safer, like solar, wind, or nuclear.
Okay…so everything you’re talking about is irrelevant to the conversation?
I grant that anyone continuing to use their old car is doing the best thing for the planet. This article discussion is around production of new cars, and which ones people buy.
Hey, I agree with the sentiment but sex work is a respectable job unlike being a crooked as shit congress person ruining the future of countless people :)
Also being a slut is a respectable job too, the world runs on sluts like me.
Yeah, I don't get it. I understand wanting to reduce or eliminate subsidies (they're just a cash handout to dealers and manufacturers imo), but there's no logical reason to be against EVs.
Here's my proposal: allow tax credits for private sales. Perhaps add some requirements to certify that the seller owned the car more than a year or something to qualify to prevent flipping.
they're just a cash handout to dealers and manufacturers imo
The US government subsidized $750B for the oil industry in 2022. The EV tax credit amount to peanuts compared to that. If you want a green energy and green transportation industry in the US, subsidies are absolutely necessary.
There’s already a solid market for used cars, unless you mean EVs, so no use for an incentive there.
The point of an incentive is a temporary tool to accelerate the transition to less polluting technology. While EVs are new they naturally are more expensive, there’s temptation to import from cheaper countries, but the incentive makes them less expensive to buy, plus incents growth of local industry. I’d also vote to phase out the incentive after that transition has happened: fossil fuel incentives should have been gone half a century ago.
If you’re specifically talking the used EV market, the most important factor is time. The more new EVs there are, the better the used EV market will be in a few years. It doesn’t help to try to increase sales of used EVs when there are so few. If you are looking used, please be patient: let’s do what we can to accelerate the growth of new EVs, and one of the benefits will be a strong used market in a gpfew years
Yes, I'm talking specifically about used EVs. We have an incentive for buying used from a dealer, but that doesn't apply if I buy from the owner directly.
So all it's doing is funneling money to dealers. Why would I buy a car for $20k from a private seller if I can get a similar car for $22k from a dealer with a $4k credit (so $18k net)? The private seller would have to sell for $18k to be on par, so why wouldn't they sell to the dealer for $19k? In this scenario, the dealers pocket the difference. If I could get the credit for private sales, I'd be willing to pay $21k ($17k net), so both I and the seller are better off (seller gets $2k more, I pay $1k less). The result is that prices for used EVs stay higher than they normally would because the private market can't effectively put downward pressure on prices.
It's entirely stupid. The dealer certainly provides some level of value (financing, selection, etc), but the private option should be practical for those who don't need or want what dealers provide. I have never purchased a car from a dealer, and I don't plan to start now (I don't trust them), and it's part of why I don't have an EV.
Here is my reasonable argument against EVs. EVs only really solve the emissions part of the equation. They dont solve the massive amounts of paved surface, private ownership of thousands of pounds of steel and plastic, they still use massive amounts of energy to move that steel and plastic and building cities for cars is largely ineffecient and expensive to maintain.
We could do a lot more for the environment than EVs. Id rather see their subsidies go to things like electrified transit, cycling infrastructure or walkability improvements.
They could reduce the amount of paved surface, since adoption of EVs would allow some parking to be moved underground as they don't generate fumes like ICEs do. Still should be treated as a stopgap solution as we move away from car-dependemce, though.
Question is what is the population density where you live?
If it's over 1,500 people a square mile, I get it. Cars suck and they screw things up for you while making relatively little sense. Any mass transit can be reasonably highly utilized with that volume of people. Meanwhile out-of-towners with their cars really screw with your day to day life.
But for places that are, say, 200 people a square mile, cars are about the only way things can work. So hardcore "we shouldn't have cars" rhetoric is going to alienate a whole bunch of people, for good reason.
The vast majority of people who are anti car are anti car centric urban environments. Noboby is expecting a small town of 300 people to build a tram, we are expecting places with congested highways to build transit instead of "adding one more lane to solve traffic forever"
Sure, and I can believe it, but the rhetoric is not so well targeted or scoped.
"we move away from car-[dependence], though."
Is not going to be seen with the implied nuance by a large chunk of potential audience, and as stated may create opponents out of folks that really wouldn't care at all either way.
They wouldn't care if they knew you only were talking about cities they don't go to.
But they do care and fight you because they think you mean their life. This means they vote against your interests because they think their interests are threatened, even if they aren't.
Interestingly, I lived in a small town of 3,000 people and up until the 1950s it had a trolley to the nearest small city, which then had trains that took you to the big city, and from there you could go anywhere.
But now the trolley sits in the town square as a monument, mocking everyone as they drive by.
Realistically, your choices aren't "EVs or mass transit", your choice is "EVs or Gas cars".
Incidentally, your gripes apply to high density population areas, where busloads of people want to go from the same point A to the same point B at the same time, and cars do not make sense. That flips when you get to a more distributed population, where a hypothetical bus would run its route empty or with 2 or 3 passengers most of the time, in which case the car is actually "greener" because it's not making empty trips and it uses less energy to move 2-3 people.
The only reason people in urban centers do not have transit is because governments neglected to build it. If they can build a 6 lane highway through your city, they could build transit.
We shouldnt use rural and spread out areas as an excuse to not build our cities and denser areas better and service them with transit.
Sure, but be aware that your messaging isn't so targeted. The messaging is "fuck cars" not "our dense cities need to be more walkable and transit". In this very thread it's "we shouldn't do anything for EVs, cars aren't the answer anyway, we need to be ditching cars".
Yes and i agree with that sentiment. 20 years down the line we will realize our cities are just as unwalkable and unable to be served by transit if we build them to exclussively serve the car. We should build cities so walking, cycling, transit and driving are all realistic options. For most north American cities we only prioiritize the car.
Sure, and I've seen some good projects, and less than good projects.
In my city, they took a street and closed it and redid it as pedestrians only. Worked great, more foot traffic going from any establishment to any other, and car people only had to walk an extra block or two to get to things.
There's a section where they made a highly walkable environment from scratch, with car access basically through entering a big mostly underground parking deck, so the surface was reasonably car free.
On the flip side, the city loved these efforts so much they mandated mixed use zoning for all new construction. And the three big projects I've seen play out under this new scheme all followed the same recipe:
Proposal with 90% residential, and 10% "retail/commercial"
The proposal is phased, with hyper detailed residential plans and a vague box for the "retail/commercial" phase "to come later"
The residential is built, and then the company withdraws their plan for further development.
One that did go in for the true mixed use early on suffered because no commercial tenant would tolerate streetside only parking (which was effectively part of the deal, given how the regulations were written parking lots/decks were not viable for these "walkable neighborhoods" when they could just have a parking lot or deck nearby by setting up their business somewhere else)
In my area, we're widening a highway, which will cost $3-4B. We had a train project estimate that was rejected that totally would've replaced my commute that was estimated at ~$1B and was a prerequisite for a major company bringing more jobs here. We did the highway and not the train...
Overhauling transit just isn't practical politically.
That said, I'm generally against subsidies and in favor of Piguovian taxes. I think we should:
eliminate subsidies to fossil fuels and EVs
increase taxes on large, heavy vehicles and gas to fully fund roads (remove road infrastructure from general taxes)
funnel money saved from the above into mass transit - our entire transit system costs $20 times the annual ridership
I think much of north america is dug so deep into car centric planning that making drivers pay the full cost would be too expensive for a significant portion of the population and workforce. I think the alternatives need to exist before the taxation because many people are constrained to their car being their only reliable way to get to work.
Making that cost more could put huge financial stress on a family whereas building the rail before the taxation could provide a cheaper alternative before the taxation even begins.
I'm thinking we'd calculate the average cost for driving a car based on a set of metrics (curb weight, miles driven, etc), then apply discounts for certain cars (older cars, EVs, etc). The bulk of the impact would be on large trucks and wealthy people. That would increase costs for shipped products (and encourage local production), which would be balanced out by better mass transit.
It should certainly be phased in to avoid a big shock, but that should be the goal. It turns out that driving for me is cheaper than taking transit because roads are so heavily subsidized. If I had to pay for my actual use, transit would look a lot more attractive.
That’s actually somewhat my argument for EVs. We know there are better ways to live, with lots of benefits including being more environmentally friendly, but it requires long term changes that were not good at and political will we don’t have, and a huge upfront expense. EVs are better than status quo, are needed for less densely populated areas, and are an improvement we can make now everywhere. Let’s “git r done”
Even here in the Boston area, which is arguably one of the best in the US for walkable cities and transit, where more improvements are hugely popular, where politics is solid blue and politicians are on board, transit improvements are a matter of decades. Here in the suburbs:
I’d take the train into the city but that’s the only direction it works.
I can walk to my town center and transit hub, and frequently do, but that’s not where my job is.
I can take Acela to NYC but that’s the only practical destination.
my town is getting its third commuter rail station, as a park and ride for highway commuters, but that’s many years away and those commuters still need to get to the park and ride
Aside from people whose complete life is in the city, it’s difficult to see a time we could actually give up on cars. However there’s plenty of room for hope and optimism: we can take some trips out of cars, and we can continue to take more. Cars are necessary to step forward but the goal should be to minimize the cases where cars are necessary until people don’t find them worth having
There is a logical reason to be against forced adoption before the technology matures. For a lot of the country they are not a viable replacement for ICE yet. They’re improving, but not as fast as ICEs are being phased out and that leaves a lot of places where a dwindling used market will be the only option for many people.
What are you talking about? Pretty much the only thing I see on the used market are ICE vehicles. Do you live somewhere where they're legitimately hard to find?
Prices for even 200k mile used vehicles are skyrocketing and cheap new cars simply don’t exist. Yes, ICE is the majority of vehicles out there, especially in rural areas, but they are more expensive and less available than ever. 10 years ago I bought a 100k mile Volvo wagon for $10k, put 50k more miles on it then sold it for $5k; if I wanted to buy the exact same car back today with 250k miles i would need to pay $15k for it. As manufacturers shift to EVs that problem is only going to get worse.
A 100k mile used car is already near the bottom of the depreciation curve, you probably sold it too cheap. Adjusting for inflation, $10k 10 years ago is $13k today. Covid did a number on the auto industry so all car prices skyrocketed, but they're starting to recover: your hypothetical is only 15% higher when you adjust for inflation, which looks about right.
Cheap new cars don't exist anymore because everyone want to buy fucking luxury SUVs or pickup trucks to drive their kids to school. It has nothing to do with EVs; we actually see this trend on the EV market too: GM abandoned their best-selling EV (Chevy Bolt) to instead focus on a bigger SUV (an electric Equinox, IIRC).
Don't forget that subsidies also swing in the other direction to fossil fuels companies. If we want to eliminate subsidies, then why not for both players so the playing field is even again? Otherwise, giving EVs subsidies might actually level the playing field more than not.
If only they actually would die on that hill. They won't, because they've conditioned their base to support them no matter what. Instead, they'll rot the hill and move on to the next once the one they're on can't be salvaged.
